Spend analytics can do more than give you information on spending – this data can also help you increase productivity and save money by getting leaner on your purchase-to-pay practices.
To help you accomplish this, spend analytics identifies areas for improvement for you by:
• Pinpointing bottlenecks – Spend analytics can help you determine exactly where processes are breaking down and things are
coming to a halt. At a glance, you can see how long approvals and order fulfillments are taking, delays in invoice processing, and what exactly is holding up transactions.
• Comparing data by location – Spend analytics enable profitability comparisons by location to determine which sites are engaging in best practices and which sites are facing struggles. You can use this information to initiate friendly competitions across your organization and encourage sites to improve efficiency and outdo one another. These types of contests can help you uncover new ways to save and energize employees.
• Streamlining invoice processing – Spend analytics can help you see how quickly and easily you’re processing invoices with different vendors. You may find that some vendors are taking full advantage of capabilities in your system such as a vendor portal, electronic data exchange, flipping POs to invoices, and e-invoicing to ensure fast processing and payment. Then, you can determine if there are other vendors that have the ability to use these features but aren’t, and encourage them to do so to streamline all invoice processing.
• Tracking budgets – Spend analytics tells you in real time exactly how you’re tracking against your budget. With graphical dashboards, you can get a total picture of how much you’ve spent on products received and services rendered, as well as pending requests in the system against projects. This will tell you where you may need to cut back or change processes to stay on track.
• Benchmarking progress – Spend analytics shows how you stack up against industry averages. Analytics tools that offer Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with benchmarking capabilities can help you find out how your practices measure up with world-class companies and what they’re doing that might be different. If something is helping these companies keep processes lean, it may also help you.
To learn more about leveraging spend analytics, register for Verian’s complimentary webinar – Driving Smarter Spending: Advances in Intelligent Purchase to Pay, March 24 at 2 p.m. EDT.